ICYMI last night the shortlist for the 14th BBC National Short Story Award was announced, 5 stories inspired by #MeToo , Brexit and Trump. Get the anthology, available now from your local bookshop (if you don’t see it just ask!) 🏆 #BBCNSSA#shortstoriespic.twitter.com/oXeHjdjT9q

Don‘t forget the new Twitter version provides a facility to “bookmark” tweets for later. This can help if you haven’t got time to read just now or have used up all your “free views” till next month. Direct link to text and reading: The Stone by Louise Erdrich.

Photo: “Author Louise Erdrich reading at the 2015 National Book Festival. Erdrich won the 2012 National Book Award for Fiction for her novel The Round House.” (Wikipedia)

“It is still dark when you finally arrive. A few streetlights set about the expanse of the cliff-top car park are dead, their bulbs ghostly and pale as blind eyes. All the parking bays are empty. The dim glow of the dashboard clock displays just after four, but like the speedometer, like the fuel gauge, like everything about the Astra, the hands are old and tired and worn and not to be trusted. It’s a miracle the car got this far.”

Dan Powell’s prize-winning short fiction has appeared in the pages of Being Dad, The Lonely Voice, Unthology, The London Magazine and Best British Short Stories. His debut collection, Looking Out of Broken Windows, was shortlisted for the Scott Prize and longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the Edge Hill Prize. He is currently working on a second story collection and a debut novel, is a First Story writer-in-residence, and a Doctoral Researcher in Creative Writing at University of Leicester. He procrastinates at danpowellfiction.com and on Twitter as @danpowfiction.

— The Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award (@ShortStoryAward) July 28, 2019

Read excerpts from the six short stories and bio’s of the writers, including Danielle McLaughlin who won the Willesden Herald international short story award 2013, when our judge was David Means. Link: Sunday Times

“I slip into the water. I didn’t plan to swim, but there’s still static fizzing in my veins from last night’s concert and as the river laps me up I’m cooling down, the static disappearing into a string of bubbles streaming out all around me and rising up from the deep channel, like there’s a diver down there somewhere.“

Roberta Dewa has always written fiction, and in her twenties published three historical novels with Robert Hale. While studying for various degrees she published poetry and short fiction, including a first short story collection, Holding Stones (Pewter Rose Press, 2009). In 2013 she published a memoir, The Memory of Bridges, and a contemporary novel followed: The Esplanade (Weathervane Press, 2014). Since retiring from university teaching, she has been writing poetry and short stories again, and in November 2017 won the Willesden Herald prize with her story Dark Song. She is currently coming to the end of the first draft of a new novel.